[2.8]
This film definitely falls into the lower tiers of Kurosawa for me. I generally like his contemporary dramas (HIGH AND LOW being my fav of all his films) over his samurai epics, but despite THE BAD SLEEP WELL being based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, it fails to capture the complex emotions and powerful ethos of Kurosawa’s superior Bard adaptations, RAN and THRONE OF BLOOD. The movie opens promisingly with a lengthy and intricate wedding scene (like THE GODFATHER, the film takes advantage of the gathering to introduce its full cast of characters and set-up the background information we need). The scene is slightly weighed down by the overbearing exposition, all delivered by a gang of reporters who sit on the sidelines, observing and commenting on the wedding (like a Greek chorus). While this seems like a necessary (if un-cinematic) evil in order to quickly get us up to speed on the story, it is merely the first in a series of burdensome expository scenes used by Kurosawa as a narrative crutch to keep the plot going. The basic premise is that two Japanese companies have conspired, through a series of kickbacks, to rig the bidding for a valuable government contract. Several years previously, an official with the company committed suicide, and despite the rumors that it was due to guilt over the corruption, nothing was proven. Now, someone has sent a cake to the wedding of the Vice-President’s daughter, with the cake in the shape of the company’s headquarters, with a rose sticking ominously out of the window where the man jumped. Someone is clearly out for vengeance, to expose these crooked leaders, and the mystery of who sent the cake is set. But then, the movie muddles through for another hour, showing Mr. Nishi (the boss’s new son-in-law, played with stoic rage by Toshiro Mifune) as the one orchestrating a convoluted web of revenge, but we don’t even learn what he is avenging until much later in the film. When we finally learn that Nishi is Furaya’s illegitimate son, it comes off as a fairly lackluster revelation, especially considering that we learn that Nishi never even really knew his father, making his passion for vengeance even more overblown. There are some nice moments of thrills and suspense (such as when company-man Shirai sneaks around, getting keys from a storage unit and then uses them to open a safety deposit box, only to discover the contents emptied, with only a photo of the building with an X to mark where Furayama was forced to kill himself). Still, perhaps owing to cultural difference in so far as how much emphasis people put on loyalty to their jobs and bosses, the fact that no one murdered Furuyama per se, but merely urged or threatened him to commit suicide, gives Nishi’s motivations even more of a melodramatic flair. When Nishi goes as far as almost killing Shirai to send a message, he admits that he has learned how to be as evil as the evil men he wants to take down.
Just as we begin wondering how much longer this rather tedious revenge plot can be stretched (about one and a half hours in), the situation shifts dramatically as the bosses discover Nishi’s true identity. Nishi goes on the run, and, along with the “real” Nishi (an old friend who surprisingly has sacrificed his name and life for no good reason), they hold one of the company men hostage, waiting for him to reveal where he has hidden evidence. Nishi’s arch-enemy, his ruthless father-in-law Iwabuchi, tricks his daughter into revealing the location of Nishi’s hideaway. Soon after, we learn that both Nishis have been killed in a car crash. This basically serves as the abrupt ending to the narrative, and it’s disconcerting how quickly (and offscreen) this crucial story beat is done away with. The film’s coda shows Iwabuchi calling his superiors and, upon their urging, resigns his post and promises to take a long vacation out of Japan. When hanging up the phone, he bows in respect. Yes, Kurosawa wants to show the excessive cold-heartedness of men who value loyalty to business above all else, but he does this to the detriment of real character development and more complex relationships. And perhaps because he is intentionally riffing on Hamlet, he chooses to have crucial events occur offscreen, leaving the viewers to be filled in through indulgent exposition. The movie is very plot heavy, and it becomes increasingly difficult to care about the fate of anyone, as their characterisations hinge solely on their immediate narrative motivations. Nishi cares about nothing except revenge, and even when the film hints that he has compassion for his crippled wife, that subplot is left discarded and unresolved. But then, Kurasawa has never been great with depicting romantic feelings. In a shallow comparison, Mikio Naruse does women’s pictures (focused on an internal world of sacrifice, suffering, and perseverance) and Kurasawa does men’s. Kurasawa focuses on masculine honor, loyalty, and the core Japanese structures of clan and family. Mifune looks good in glasses and suit, but as the film’s main protagonist, he is exceptionally bland and unthreatening. And while a few actors deliver more naturalistic performances, the stylized histrionics of some of the salarymen (notably Shirai’s fixed look of wide-eyed horror) clashes horribly with the contemporary setting. THE BAD SLEEP WELL is a beautiful title for a tepid film.
burning retina 